Melanie Halem: Complete streets can complete Gainesville

By Melanie Halem Special to The Sun

Monday

Sep 16, 2019 at 2:00 AMSep 18, 2019 at 6:29 PM

The University of Florida has a responsibility to make its students feel safe as they travel to class. This can be achieved by increasing biking infrastructure, while also increasing sustainability by encouraging more students to bike.

A Florida Department of Transportation study identified Gainesville as a hot-spot in Florida for bike crashes, with all major bike crash clusters surrounding UF’s campus. Between the years 2011-2014, a total of 199 bike crashes were registered in the Gainesville area.

Infrastructure that encourages individual sustainable change can be seen in European cities like Strasbourg, France, and Freiburg, Germany, where bikes are used extensively. Freiburg is considered the bike capital of Germany; the town now has more bicycles than cars.

This became a reality because Freiburg’s administration created a large bike network through careful city planning. As a result, biking rates increased to 28% from 15%. This is the same case in Strasbourg, which has the largest cycle network in France.

To increase biking rates in Gainesville and at UF, biking infrastructure like what can be found in Freiburg and Strasbourg should be implemented on campus through complete streets and protected bike lanes. Complete streets encourage walking and cycling by being safe and convenient for all modes of transport, which promotes sustainable transportation more than regular streets that only focus on automobile ease.

There are many types of complete streets, but the type that would find the most success in pedestrian-heavy parts of campus are living streets, streets that are open to any pedestrian crossings at any place and time. These streets have a shared space approach where there are few demarcations from where pedestrians and automobiles should use the road.

This design allows for the road to be dominated primarily by pedestrians, which is important on a campus where students cross roads frequently to get to their next class. Living streets could be implemented on the portion of Union Road by the Plaza of the Americas and the portion of Newell Road across from Marston Science Library, so that students can cross safely and freely.

Protected bike lanes are lanes on the road that are protected by a barrier, which is usually a curb, planters or posts. While any of the many types of protective lanes would benefit the university, the most protective for the smallest installation cost are small barricades.

There are 13 miles of bike lanes on UF’s campus. If all 13 miles of bike lanes on UF’s campus were protected with a barrier, bikers would not have to worry about being hit by a passing bus or other vehicle.

The implementation of this initiative will also aid in UF’s sustainability efforts. If the university truly wants to reduce its carbon footprint, providing an infrastructure that encourages more bike riding is integral.

Moreover, UF is already interested in becoming a bike-friendly school. The school annually enters into the League of American Bicyclist “Bicycle Friendly University” awards. Since 2016, UF has received the silver award, under gold and platinum; 29 schools achieved higher rankings. For a university that is committed to increasing their rankings, it would be pertinent for UF to lend more attention to the bike safety problem.

The costs to protect all 13 miles of UF’s bike lanes and install one complete street will be immensely cheaper than other project prices that have been proposed to UF. There have been efforts to create a denser, walkable campus already.

A few months ago, a plan was proposed to UF’s Board of Trustees to remove cars from the center of campus. This plan has not yet been approved and would cost around $25 million. While a campus without cars would be much safer for students, it is far from being implemented. By changing some roads to complete streets and protecting bike paths, a higher level of safety in Gainesville can be achieved for students at a much cheaper price.

Furthermore, UF and Gainesville have already been awarded a $2 million traffic safety grant to determine unsafe intersections on campus. The National Science Foundation awarded this money so that Gainesville could study and determine high-risk intersections where pedestrians and bikers are hit.

UF and the surrounding city will use the data from the study to plan improvement projects for the intersections that are the most dangerous. It is evident that UF is already interested in improving traffic safety around campus, so it would be in their best interests to adopt this plan.

Melanie Halem is a UF sophomore with a double major in political science and sustainability studies.

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